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[Catholic Caucus] BREAKING: Pope Francis appoints another commission to study female deacons Pope Francis has reopened the investigation into the possibility of women’s ordination as deacons. VATICAN CITY, April 8, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) ― Pope Francis has reopened the investigation into the possibility of women’s ordination as deacons.  This morning the Vatican released a memo stating that the pontiff had decided “during a recent audience granted to His Eminence Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF]” to appoint a new commission on the “study of the female diaconate.”  Francis appointed Cardinal Giuseppe...

Red Double of the Second Class (with a Simple Octave) “ONCE THE MOTHER OF FALSE GODS, but now the bride of Christ, O Rome, it is through Laurence thou art victorious! Thou hadst conquered haughty monarchs and subjected nations to thine empire; but though thou hadst overcome barbarism, thy glory was incomplete till thou hadst vanquished the unclean idols. This was Laurence’s victory, a combat bloody yet not tumultuous like those of Camillus or of Cæsar; it was the contest of faith, wherein self is immolated, and death is overcome by death. What words, what praises suffice to celebrate...

WASHINGTON — Fifty-seven Orthodox Christian clergymen and lay leaders, including the heads of two leading Orthodox seminaries in the U.S., have issued a public statement calling on church leaders to defend Orthodox teaching on the creation and calling of man as male and female by opposing the appointment of deaconesses in the Orthodox Church. The statement comes in response to a public statement issued in October by nine Orthodox liturgical scholars in the U.S. and Greece, expressing support for the Patriarchate of Alexandria’s November 2016 decision to “restore” the ancient order of deaconesses and its February 2017 appointment of deaconesses...

Stan Vanuytrecht beat 50 applicants to win the role and occupy one of the last hermitages in central Europe A Catholic deacon has won a competition to live in one of central Europe’s last hermitages, beating 50 other applicants to occupy a 350-year-old cliffside cell above a small Austrian town. Stan Vanuytrecht, 58, responded to an advertisement placed by Fr Alois Moser, which asked for someone with a “connection to Christian belief” and “at peace with themselves”. The role, which is unpaid, became vacant after the previous incumbent left to pursue a writing career in Vienna. The hermitage, in Saalfeden,...

First, today I saw a piece at Breitbart that Pope Francis popularity has dropped.  HEREThat said, I have received links to various articles saying that the Pope has considered establishing a commission to study the issue of the ordination of woman as deaconesses…. (aka deaconettes -it’s easier to pronounce).Studying is one thing and doing is another.That said, I saw something telling in the Fishwrap account (aka National Schismatic Reporter). The pope responded that he had spoken about the matter once some years ago with a “good, wise professor” who had studied the use of female deacons in the early centuries of...

On October 6, 2015, Archbishop Paul-André Durocher of Gatineau, Canada surprised Catholic Synod observers when he called for more study on the possibility of women deacons. In the course of his allotted three-minute address to the assembled bishops at the Synod on the Family, the Archbishop suggested that admitting women to the permanent diaconate could help affirm the dignity of women by giving them a wider role in the Church. He proposed this as something he considered feasible, given that the diaconate is traditionally ordered “non ad sacerdotium, sed ad ministerium” (“not to priesthood, but to ministry”).The goal of...

Events of recent memory have left my head spinning in disbelief—“Caitlyn,” same-sex so-called “marriage,” three women “marrying” in South America, and, yes, “gay Catholics” and “chaste gay couples.” With me, you may wonder how all this has emerged in a short few decades of social upheaval. I may have an answer: Society has constructed an unreal cultural landscape in which things that are not sexuality are passed off as sexuality. Even a majority of Catholics are, perhaps unwittingly, swallowing this unreality, hook, line, and sinker.The fabric of this false landscape is language—language that frames everyone and everything in a...

Some readers may remember the post about Ulf Ekman, a prominent Evangelical pastor who stunned the world when he announced last year he was becoming Catholic.Now, an update, The National Catholic Register: On March 9, 2014, Ulf Ekman, founder and pastor of Word of Life church in Uppsala, Sweden, shocked his congregation with the announcement that he and his wife, Birgitta, were leaving Word of Life to join the Catholic Church. The Ekmans’ decision created a commotion, not only among the Protestant faithful, but even throughout decidedly secular Sweden.The Ekmans will present their story at the “Defending the Faith Conference” July 24-26 at...

Thirteen years ago Jim Cardosi’s wife, Cindy, discovered she had little time left to live.In 2002 she experienced symptoms resulting from a neurological illness that by 2005 would be identified as frontotemporal dementia or Pick’s Disease, which Cindy developed in her mid-40s.She required full-time care, so Jim retired from the military. They raised five kids together and built their lives around each other.Jim’s faith kept him poised throughout the illness, and he felt the call to the priesthood before her death. He cared for Cindy until her passing in July 2008 at 51 years old in their Jacksonville, Florida home.“I...

In a Blog post addressing a letter written by Archbishop John Nienstedt to a mother explaining the Church's teaching regarding homosexual acts and the reception of the Holy Eucharist, Deacon Ryan Duns, the Jesuit seminarian who believes that "gay marriage" might be a movement of the Holy Spirit, said that the Archbishop's letter, "..serves only to reinforce the belief that the Catholic Church is a homophobic institution more concerned with obedience than human flourishing." See here. In his Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), Pope Benedict XVI writes, "It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into...

Writing for LifeSiteNews, Hillary White reported last Friday that Bishop Michael Campbell, "...has pressured one of his deacons to cease blogging in a move described by critics as an effort to silence the deacon’s lively defense of orthodox Catholic doctrine and the papacy." White continues: "Deacon Nick Donnelly’s well-travelled blog, 'Protect the Pope,' now carries the note, 'From its inception to the beginning of March 2014, Rev. Nick Donnelly, was the main author and editor of this blog. At this time he is in a period of reflection and prayer.' Deacon Nick Donnelly The diocese of Lancaster issued a statement...

Q: We have a permanent deacon at our parish. Some of us are wondering if the pastor sometimes allows him to do things that he’s not supposed to do… for example, occasionally the deacon preaches a homily at Sunday Mass instead of the priest. Is that permissible? What are the limits of what a deacon can do? —Jay A: It’s a good question! Lay Catholics generally understand that because a deacon is not a priest, there are some sacramental/liturgical actions which he cannot perform. But occasionally the laity are taken aback when they see a deacon engaged in some sort...

Albert Drexel, in Ein Neuer Prophet? (Stein am Rhein: Christiana, 1971) explains that: "The modernism or neo-modernism within Christianity, and especially within the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, is above all characterized by a turning away from the supernatural and an exclusive predilection for this world, the Aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII interpreted one-sidedly and hence misapplied. Teilhard's ideology was was a definitive precondition for this. Inasmuch as he turned his back to the past, fused God and the supernatural with the process of a universal evolutionism, and proclaimed religion to be an active participation in a...

If a pastor says that he has prayed and sought direction from God, and yet is opposed by the deacon board, should the pastor be able to overrule them? Do deacons occupy a role beyond that of an advisor? Are they equal in authority to the pastor? I'm not saying that a deacon board is no better than dirt (by any stretch of the imagination, as they do have a necessary and Biblical role to fill), but I can't find any scripture where a deacon board has authority equal to that of a psator. It has been said that the...

Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.And there was great joy in that city.(Acts 8:5-9) Who is Phillip? Not one of the Apostles, nor yet was he an evangelist, Phillip was one of the first Deacons of the church, he served God and the church in...

Donald Dashnaw PLATTSBURGH — David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz attended his first religious seminar at Clinton Correctional Facility escorted by then-chaplain Donald Dashnaw. "He just wanted to get exposure to the church," remembered Dashnaw, who for 58 years lived in Morrisonville and now resides in South Carolina. Dashnaw was chaplain in the Dannemora maximum-security prison for three-and-a-half years. Close-up interaction with inmates made him apprehensive beforehand, a nervousness not allayed by the background checks and fingerprinting he had to have done. But once behind the walls, Dashnaw saw the incarcerated in a different light. The inmates, he said, "were very...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Former First Baptist Church deacon Stephen Edmonds was back in court on Thursday asking a judge to change his sentence.  In 2003, Edmonds pleaded guilty to molesting three boys. In return for his guilty plea to three counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child, 10 other charges were dropped and Edmonds was sentenced to one year in jail and five years probation. He also must register as a sexual offender.  The plea deal did not sit well with families of the victims, which wanted the judge to sentence Edmonds to the maximum of six years...

Police have been targeting Estabrook Park for years trying to stop men from soliciting sex from other men there. Video: Deacon Charged For Lewd ActThe latest suspect is 48-year-old Jerome Pitchford, long-time deacon of Milwaukee's Holy Redeemer Church of God in Christ.   The warm weather seems to expose the issue at the park, and in this case, the apparent secret of a married man with children, a church leader.  Police said Pitchford apparently does not practice what he teaches in Sunday School. Police say after church at the Holy Redeemer Church of God in Christ on Sunday afternoon, he was...

The recent liturgy of ordination to the diaconate honored the ministry of presence which is primary to the vocation of permanent deacons. Nineteen men were ordained as permanent deacons at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angles June 7 before a congregation of more than 2,500 faithful. During the nearly three-hour liturgy, Cardinal Roger Mahony, main celebrant, prayed for the blessings of the Holy Spirit to be poured forth on this class of deacons known as St. Ignatius. "May there abound in them every Gospel virtue," said the cardinal, "love, concern for the sick and poor, unassuming authority, the...

“Is the candidate worthy?” intoned Bishop Patricia Fresen ceremonially, as lifelong Catholic Juanita Cordero stood before her in a pure white gown, about to be ordained as a priest. The question was asked three times during the ordination ceremony on Sunday, July 22, as one female priest and two female deacons were invested with the power to perform sacraments — a function forbidden to women under canon law. They are part of a movement from within the Roman Catholic Church that has been ordaining female priests since 2002, though those involved say that the tradition of women priests and...